Thursday, September 29, 2005

Evan Bayh Moves Farther LeftEvan has never been known for being steeped in character, so I guess it should come as no surprise that he has rolled over for moveon.org for the sake of his political future. Yes, Evan voted "no" on the confirmation of John Roberts.

Whatever happened to moderate Evan? The Evan that represented Hoosier values? Seems he has morphed into a leftist hack after all. Thats the problem with these moderate Democrats that go to Washington. They begin by talking like us, but once they hit the belt-way they are all too eager to cock a leg for any left-wing group that comes along.

President Mackensie ClintonAnyone who watched "Commander-in-Chief" on ABC last night now knows what this country has needed all along. Oh yes. Vice President Mackensie Allen takes over for a dead president who was a conservative Republican war monger... and you get the feeling that everything is going to be OK now that we have a female liberal like Mackensie Allen in the Oval Office. Her first act is to deftly maneuver aircraft carriers proving that a woman can be militarily savy and tough.

And who is the show's villain? Its that nasty Republican, conservative Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland) of whom Mackensie's staffer said, "Templeton wants book burnings and creationism taught in the classroom!" (Gasp! Not creationism!) His evil is best on display when Mackensie is addressing congress and he causes her teleprompter screen to go blank. What an S.O.B. But Mackensie Clinton, er... Allen... didn't care, cause she didn't need the teleprompter. She calmly spoke "off the cuff " and did a splendid job. Oddly, music was piped into the chamber which made the experience even more stirring.

Monday, September 26, 2005

TV's Female PresidentLet me guess.

When Geena Davis stars in "Commander-in-Chief" her character may not be like Margaret Thatcher. She may not be a conservative. She may not be in favor of engaging radical Islam wherever it may be hiding. She may not want to drill in ANWAR to ease her country's need for oil. She may be a liberal who embraces pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, and separation of church and state kind of stuff.

Could this be a veiled attempt to prepare the nation for a President Hillary Clinton? Could it? Would Hollywood do that? Surely not. But if she turns out to be a shrieking, object throwing, liberal bi___, and yet turns out to be just what our country needed... then the veil will be off the thing.

I heard on Fox this morning that a group is trying to apply pressure to Condoleeza Rice to run by running a commercial for her in New Hampshire.

But lets put on the breaks here. This woman has described herself as leaning towards being pro-choice. Yes, thats right. I was so very disappointed when I read that. She could fix this problem (that would make her un-electable by keeping the Evangelical Christian vote at home) by making promises about the court. You don't have to be pro-life to be a strict constructionist and believe Roe should be overturned... but if we are going to elect a pro-choice candidate who is a strict constructionist, Rudy Giuliani would be a stronger candidate.

Anyway I plan to tape Commander-in-Chief if I can remember. And, I plan to watch it until the nausea becomes greater than my desire to prove and report back that this post correct.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

The Faithful Consistency of the LeftA couple weeks ago I posted on this page an examination of the thinking and motivations of "Rural Conservatives and City Liberals." Though flawed, as my writing always is, it sought to examine possible reasons why conservatives and liberals have such different world views and how those views are shaped and edited by their environment. Though the myriad causes for these differences in views can be treated only in generalizations, the consistency of, and the opposing views themselves may tell us a great deal more about the source of this dichotomy.

I recently read another fine piece of writing by Bryan Alexander titled "The ACLU Shows Its True Colors." http://r-thinking.blogspot.com/ He writes about the ACLU's fight against "Abstinance-Only-Before-Marriage" curricula and their concern that it is based on ideology and religion rather than science. The piece also talks about NARAL and their sponsoring of a "Screw Abstinance Party." This kind of thing leaves me scratching my head and wondering how we've arrived in a place where abstinance among children is treated as a bad thing that should be discouraged and mocked... A place where groups that espouse disrespect for such a basic moral value are considered legitimate and treated with respect... a place where a national political party embraces and welcomes such groups.

It occured to me, (and I am certainly not the first to make this observation) that whether its the ACLU, NARAL, NOW, Environmentalists, PETA, Move-On.Org, the NEA, or the national leaders of the Democrat Party... it occurred to me that these are all the same people. And whether its Abstinance, Partial Birth Abortion, Prayer in Schools, Gay Marriage, insert moral issue here:______, they consistently come down on the opposite side of the fence where I and most other Conservative Christians are standing. So, is this an amazing coincidence? Are these groups inadvertently fighting the standards of the Church and the laws of God? What are their motivations? And if what they consider GOOD is a stench to God, what is their goal and where are they trying to lead us?

Its tempting to say that this dichotomy simply represents a story thats been played out through the history of man. This is the garden of Eden. Its the tower of Babel. This is the choosing of Whom we will serve. What does it say about the Democrats who openly embrace the Left and champion their issues? Where does it leave church-goers who vote for these Democrats... these national leaders that embrace what the Church calls evil?

When I consider the metamorphosis in this country over the past 50 years I am not very hopeful for our nation. The issues above and the Left's attitude would not have been tolerated in the first half of the last century. And while as a Christian I know that the "war" is already won, I fear that the battle for the soul of this nation may be lost.

The Left's goals are simple and their idols are visible and palpable. No longer considered outrageous, they distract subtly, and lead us in small steps toward their goal.

Finally, to evaluate the progress of the Left, consider the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. The story is not that George Bush may be successful at placing a conservative on the Court. The story is that a man must hide his thoughts on abortion and the sanctity of life in order to be confirmed. He must tread lightly when discussing his faith. Ted Kennedy does not tread lightly, and his cause passes as noble in this now secular country.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Escaping The News

I'm not as brave as I used to be, or maybe I'm just more neurotic. I tend to tape NotreDame football games and Indiana University basketball games and watch them only if they win. When the news is bad I go into a shell and do something else rather than endure the torture of watching the networks endless descriptions of pain, failure, and outrageous behavior. At some of the most exciting and peak hours of news stories you'll find me hiding in my garden pulling weeds.

It may be a function of age, or it may be a simple tiring of endless bad news, but I find it a pleasant balm to occasionally throw up my hands and retreat from the wall to wall glut of information that characterizes the 21st century.

Pulling weeds or mowing the lawn nudges me back towards the truths: God is in control. The earth is ephemeral. Worry is a dissonance in the Creator's ears.

Friday, September 16, 2005

George Bush and the Stealth NominationObviously Roberts is a "stealth" nomination. No one including George Bush knows how he will come down on Roe or any of the other hot button issues. It didn't have to be this way. There are several judges whose writings indicate that they are strict constructionists and aren't afraid to correct past mistakes made by the Supremes. And, you've got Kauthammer on Fox saying that Roberts will uphold Roe.

After all the promises made to, and the work done by Evangelicals throughout this country, George Bush has shown that either he isn't very bright, or he doesn't know how to keep a promise. Guessing isn't good enough these days with all the activism on the left. I'm a little disappointed that there aren't some conservative senators threatening to vote against this nomination.

Krauthammer may be wrong, but the point is that Bush should have remembered who got him elected... and we shouldn't be guessing.

I respect this president in so many ways, but the right Supreme Court nominations are in some respects more important than his handling of the war on terror. President Bush may know something about Roberts that I don't... but if he has chosen badly, then I consider his presidency to be already a failure. Thats how important I think this opportunity was.

Monday, September 12, 2005

David Limbaugh addresses the racial allegations surrounding Katrina by liberals and Democrat Party leaders. He makes a great point that minorities are not served by continually propping up imagined hate and inequality:

There is simply no polite way to say this, but the people who claim to have a monopoly on racial egalitarianism and human compassion are, with their false claims, doing immeasurable harm to the blacks and downtrodden they pretend to champion by incessantly dividing us along racial and economic lines. If people in positions of apparent legitimacy make such obscene allegations in public forums, then significant numbers of people are bound to believe they are true. Where is the compassion in modern liberalism when it devotes so much of its polemic energy not to mending race relations and other divisions in our society but to fanning the flames of suspicion and distrust? What kind of recklessness is it that countenances the public airing of the abominable lie that virtually half the people in the country – conservatives – don't care about certain people: minorities and the poor?As Howard Dean and his misanthropic band of race-baiters well know, whatever factors may have contributed to difficulties and delays in the federal rescue effort, they had nothing to do with racial or class prejudice – nothing. No exceptions.Regrettably, too many people worship at the altar of their own political power and are transparently willing to destroy and divide people in furtherance of their self-aggrandizement. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46240

Thursday, September 08, 2005

James Screed of Screedblog pokes his head above the nonsense:

There seems to be a competition about who can be Angrier about Katrina, since conspicuous emotion is now the primary signifier of compassion and concern. Those in the hurricane’s path have every right to anger or sadness or whichever emotion they have. But in the punditry circles there’s an angrier-than-thou mode that often seems intended to establish one’s bona fides as a critic of the relief effort. You may well have a timeline that buttresses your desire to distribute culpability across a broad spectrum of officialdom, but I AM ANGRIER THAN YOU SO MY COMPLAINTS MATTER MORE. I expect this from some – when the usual suspects that Bush was Criminally Negligent in dealing with the hurricane, you have to recall that the same people said he was Negligently Criminal for not crawling down his Crawford driveway on his belly and licking Mother Sheehan’s boots with his dry cracked tongue, and Criminally Negligent for not requiring Gitmo Korans to be sheathed in a urine-repellent plastic coating. (Remember Gitmo? The shame of America, before this other shame? The shame that came after that other shame?)It turns out that the state officials turned away the Red Cross from using pre-positioned supplies to alleviate the conditions in NO and the Superdome, “right after the storm passed.” Anyone have any Righteous Anger to spare for them? Or is that blaming the victim? It’s come to this: suggesting that the local officials might be more responsible for, you know, local conditions is now a partisan position. Apparently if you put more responsibility for those actually entrusted with the welfare of a city, you’re one of those “big government is the problem” Reaganite nutcases who wants to devolve everything down to the block level. http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/index.html

Friday, September 02, 2005

Katrina: A Father's Neglect?Anyone who looks at the death and suffering down along the gulf coast or on a grander scale, the tsunami victims of the Indian ocean, naturally enough asks himself how a loving father in heaven could allow this to happen. Where was our Father when all this took place?

I'll answer that question with an analogous story about another seemingly neglectful father. I turned fifty-one this year, but today I've been thinking about my first two days in the nursery at Marion General Hospital. From beginning to end the experience was filled with pain, disappointment, regret, and a general lack of consideration on the part of my father.

Where do I begin? The crib they placed me in was drab and very plain. Some of the other babies had newer and brightly colored cribs. And one of my wheels wobbled. Why me? My mother's milk was fine. But some of the other infants got formula, and though it wouldn't have been as good for me, I think I should have been afforded the experience. And maybe there was another breast nearby that had sweeter more abundant milk? Sadly I'll never know. There was a child in the crib next to mine that I liked and whose company gave me comfort. Suddenly he was gone. And what about the time the doctor came in and circumcised me? How could a loving father allow that to happen? All that pain and humiliation... Where was Dad then? There were many rooms in the hospital that I never got to see. Dad could have easily addressed that situation. And the most painful inequity of all was that I only had 48 hours in the nursery. Some infants had 49, 50.... Some even got to stay for 72 hours!!! How was that fair?

Still, I left the nursery a long time ago and I now know that Dad had an entirely different perspective on my first two days at the hospital. He was there for me, making sure that I had everything I needed, even if I didn’t get everything I wanted. He was thinking about getting my room painted… about my first steps… the talks we would have and the things we would do when I was no longer encumbered by such an underdeveloped brain and body. I think the reason why I cried so much was simply because… all I could see was the nursery. I should have had more faith in my father.

The things of the nursery seemed very important at the time, but my life didn’t really begin until my father took me home.

Its not a perfect analogy but I hope it expresses how God sees our short time on this earth very differently than we do. Even for Christians its hard to grasp that our lives aren't about us and our comforts. Its hard to remember that this life isn't the party. As we write our checks to our favorite Christian relief organization (I've chosen I.D.E.S. see below), its important to remember that our job is to love and take care of each other... and to believe that our Father's plan is perfect.